I’m sure everyone knows that on April 22nd we celebrated Earth Day. Not a joyous function if I may add. Why should we when we are killing our home. Funny.. how we set our house on fire and we keep sitting around planning how to spend our money.

No worry. This is not a normal Earth Day post. That is why I post it way after April 22nd. If you want to know what you can do to help out, I’m sure there are a lot of environmental blogs out there with great list.

Just watch the movie “Inconvenient Truth” currently aired on HBO. Whether you believe it or not, that’s totally up to you. But I truly find the images and facts elaborated in that documentary very shocking. And if that doesn’t give you the idea of how terrible our condition is now, I don’t know what will.

That said, today I’m actually going to write why the whole idea of environmental will most probably fail. Why after all the campaign made to increase our awareness, it can still be pointless. Rest assured, if it fails, we will die. As simple as that.

It will fail because everyone just doesn’t want to care.

“Someone else should be responsible. The government should make a drastic move for the environment. Not us. How can one man/woman make a change. Even if we use less electricity, it will not help in the overall state of environment. It will only make ourself more uncomfortable. So why bother?”

This idea is very wrong. The fact is, if the occupant of a house in fire didn’t care about putting out the fire, don’t you think they deserve to be burnt alive in there?

We need to care, guys. We need to know that what we did will have effect whether positively or negatively to our home. If we don’t know what’s happening, google them out. It’s our responsibility to know. Check what we can do to help. Information is just at the click of a button.

Forget about influencing others. How can you do that if you are still not convinced yourself. Influencing others should be our next goal in the next Earth Day.

– I wonder –
Anybody else watched the movie?

——— Personal Note ———
It’s simple really. If you know that what you are doing is damaging our world, why keep doing it? And if you know that what you are doing is prolonging our world’s health, then what possible reason we should stop doing it?

I have a confession. House chores are very boring. All those dishes to wash, corner of the house to clean. I don’t hate them. It’s just sometimes when the dishes piled up, it is very demotivating to just look at it. This attitude does not help either since it will keep piling up until at one point, I will have no other choice but immediately do it. By that time, I will often do it with a not-happy look in my face.

I was introduced to a new concept of cleaning, which is “Clean As You Go”. Basically it says as soon as you created a mess immediately clear it up. Let me elaborate through some examples

When you are done with dinner, immediately wash all the dishes. This will only takes 2 minutes tops since the amount of dishes is just a few. As a result, whenever you go into the kitchen, there will be no dishes piling up. Thus a smile on your face. (I know there’s one on mine)

You see some clutter on your desk, like crumpled paper, unused envelopes etc. Don’t hesitate. throw them away into the rubbish bin immediately. Take 30 seconds from your time to do exactly that. You will then have a more organized desk for your work

When you’re casually driving just after the rain and out of nowhere there’s a dirt flying and hit your windscreen. You can leave it there if you want and drive away. But it will be easier if you stop the car and wash it away immediately. If you wait, that dirt may dried up and makes it harder to clean.

The idea is simple. Whatever you do, be it working, watching television, dinner etc, allocate a few seconds for quick cleaning. Just a few seconds will do and you will see a great change in your house cleanliness.

Another important point you must remember is not to overdo the cleaning. If not you will end up doing a spring cleaning project all the way and you cannot finish your other works, or watching that television. Remember, all you need is a few seconds.

There’s a saying in Malaysia – Sedikit-sedikit lama-lama jadi bukit. Directly translated – A few dirt daily, soon it will be a mountain.

– I wonder –
Do you have cleanliness problem in your house?

——— Personal Note ———
I am actually practising this now. It all started when I have to do house cleaning project everytime I’m off from work. To tell you the truth, I’d rather be resting on my day off.

Here’s the tricky part. Some part of the world call the game football, while another part call it soccer. To be fair, I’m going to use the word used in Malaysia which is football. Just to be clear, I’m referring to this.

Why I’m writing about football, when I am actually not a good player to boast? I watched a match yesterday on TV and these ideas just hit me. There’s so many things we can learn from football.

1) Only one aim – The Goal
Each team has only one aim in mind, which is to move the ball to the oposing team’s goal area.

Everything the player did from the start of the game to the end is aimed to do this. You will not find a player just squat down and admire the ball’s roundness.

We should follow this example. Figure out our goals in life. And make sure everything we do will get us closer to that goal

2) Own goal happened – life goes on
Sometimes the player accidentally kicks the ball into his own goal. A lot of people will be frustrated especially his team. Does the game stop to give time for the player to mourn? No

In our life, we are bound to make mistakes here and there. Some mistakes maybe critical and some may not. What ever it is, don’t spend too much time mourning it, shake it off and move on. Time waits for no one.

3) Referee solves issues
Just imagine a match without the referee. I don’t think the game will last 2 minutes without a fight. In a case of foul play, both team will never admit their team is wrong. They will fight and in the end, nobody will win the game.

Sometimes, we also will face crisis. A problem where each party will have different opinion. Neither opinion is wrong but still we insist that everyone follows our opinion. In these cases, it is better to assign a third party decider. Everyone must agree to follow what that referee decide. This is because having a decision is always better than no decision at all.

4) The tougher the opponent, the sweeter the victory
Assuming you are a national player, would you play against the kindergarten football team? No? Me too. The victory if any, will be meaningless. unless of course you are playing with your children 🙂

Never expect life to be easy. It’s not. It is full of difficulties and problems any way you look at it. However it is these difficulties and problems that will make life worth living. When you know you earn your life

So whenever you are stuck with a problem. face it like a warrior and if you survive, enjoy your victory

– I wonder –
Any other lesson we can extract from the game?

———— Personal Note ————
I am not very good at playing football. That fact had been tested many times and it always end with the same result. One of the game that I am good with is Sepakraga. Apparently there is no Wikipedia explanation of Sepakraga, however you can watch the video of the game.

When people actually say “think positive”, what comes to your mind. Let say you were fired by your boss from work, what would you say to yourself?

Everything will be okay

I will definitely get another job in a few days

This is a good thing for me

Any other answers? For me, all these answers are a good example of a more positive thinking. Trying to look at the positive side of things. They are far much better than –

I’m going to die of starvation

I’m such a loser

Everyone hates me

Don’t you agree? However, when you think about it. Do you really know that things will be okay? Do you really know that you will get another job ASAP? And is it really a good thing to be sacked from a company?

The truth is all those words are only words to calm yourself down. It is always better to be calm and positive than panicky and negative. However, they are still basically lies we tell ourselves. And deep down inside, we actually know that.

Now that’s my friend is why positive thinking is always very hard to do, and sometimes it will do more harm than good. Unless of course you know the proper way of positive thinking..

The actual proper way to an effective positive thinking is to acknowledge what has happened first.

In this specific example, we must first acknowledge that we are fired from the job. Never try to comfort us by saying that the company made the biggest mistake by sacking you, or that you will get better job etc.

Acknowledge first that you are fired. It’s real and whatever it is, it’s done. Whether you want to believe it or not, you are now jobless. And whatever future maybe will depend ENTIRELY on how you react to this.

Once you had acknowledge this, I can assure you your fear of being fired will reduce drastically. Because you’ve dealt with the issue. You can now move on by planning what exactly should you do to overcome this problem.

That is positive thinking – the way of thinking that will benefit you. Not the lies you told yourself for comfort. Let say you tell yourself that you will get a job in 2 weeks. And unfortunately you remain jobless for over a year now, just imagine the damage done to your mind with the frustration.

Rule of thumb : Positive thinking is when you said something to yourself that will make good things happen.

Examples of positive thinking words

I know it will hurt, but I have no time for that. I will fight with all my energy to watch my baby grow. To teach her everything I know about life and see her be the smartest girl on the planet. (To be said when fighting for life during delivery)

I fail the exam, which means I am given a second opportunity to fix my life. I now know exactly what it takes to succeed.

Accidents happened to me as a reminder that I need to improve my driving skills. Good thing it is only minor accident

Examples of positive thinking that lies

This will not hurt.

I am going to excel next time

It’s not my fault the accident happened. I’m just not lucky

Examples of negative thinking

If I die, my baby will still have her father

I’m stupid

Some people are just not meant to drive

———- Personal Note ———-
I actually dedicate this post to my wife, the mrs. She is now in her 9th month of pregnancy. And a lot of things come to her mind now, both positive and negative. Can’t blame her since this is our first baby.